West German Minister Charged with Having Been a Nazi Youth Leader

October 9, 1959

BONN (Oct. 8)

Charges that Theodor Oberlander, West Germany’s Minister of Expellees and War Victims, was a Nazi collaborator and apologist for Nazi racist theories during the war, were made today by a leftist organization of victims of Nazism, which quoted the East German Communist press for its allegations.

Mr. Oberlander denied one of the charges–that he had participated in mass executions during World War II at Lemberg–stating that it was the Russians, and not the Germans, who murdered Polish citizens at Lemberg. However, the leftists also accused him of having been a leader of Hitler’s Storm Troops, and of having written several Nazi publications, one of which allegedly referred to Communism as “Jewish materialism.”